Newsletter #3

Feb 112 min read

I know that I say this every year, but I can’t believe that January has flown by quite as quickly as it has done this year!

We’ve had a very good month here on the farm, although the weather has certainly brought the usual mix of challenges with rain, high winds, a dash of sleet, hail, frost with some lovely still, dry days thrown in as well. It’s certainly safe to say that the weather never gets boring in Cornwall!

Charlie has used the dry spells to get out into the fields - on foot at least - and has been gathering data for the Single Farming Incentive (SFI) that we are part of. This is designed to help farmers to deliver all sorts of environmental benefits, such as biodiversity promotion, and habitat creation. Charlie has been carrying out our hedgerow assessment as part of this.

He’s also been busy soil sampling ahead of our planned spring planting of cereals and pulses. Soil testing gives us a lot of useful information. We have learned to farm a lot less prescriptively over the last few years. One of the key results we will be looking at is organic matter percentage.

Steadily increasing soil organic matter has many benefits including nutrient retention and distribution, soil permeability, increasing drought resistance and carbon sequestration. The cover crop, in the photo below, of Winter Oats and Vetch will be grazed by the sheep, before going under the plough.

Life with the pigs continues as normal. The wind and rain doesn’t remotely affect them, and they have been enjoying munching on our homegrown and chemical free hay during the winter days. Nick and Charlie work hard to make the hay during the warmer months, and the pigs really do love it!

January may have a reputation for being a dark and depressing month, but we find that there’s much to love about it. We’ve been busy wassailing our apple trees, which is an old tradition that we like to mark every year. We’re hoping for plenty of apples to go with our beautiful pork next autumn!

We’ve also been celebrating Burn’s Night. The boys aren’t too keen on traditional haggis, so this year, we added some of our nitrate free bacon to the mix along with vegetarian haggis, tatties and neeps to create our own version. We’ve been thrilled with the nitrate free bacon and gammons - they’re absolutely delicious!

Our Farmers Markets in Truro and at Tregew have been extremely busy - and for this, we can’t thank you enough. Your support means so much to us and to our family farm here in the heart of Cornwall. We enjoy meeting you all so much and hearing all about the amazing dishes you’ve been cooking up with our home reared pork, and Ben’s lamb from here on our farm.